Nut-brown Maid

Henry, Lord Clifford, first Earl of Cumberland, and Lady
Margaret Percy, his wife, are the originals of this ballad. Lord
Clifford had a miserly father and ill-natured step-mother, so he left
home and became the head of a band of robbers. The ballad was written
in 1502, and says that the “Not-browne Mayd” was wooed and won by a
knight who gave out that he was a banished man. After describing the
hardships she would have to undergo if she married him, and finding her
love true to the test, he revealed himself to be an earl's son, with
large hereditary estates in Westmoreland. (Percy: Reliques, series ii.)